Monday, June 17, 2013

In St. Louis, we're often quite displeased when a misleading national crime report puts us in one of the top spots. But today, we're going to just embrace our latest achievement in the rankings department, no matter how flawed the methodology may be!

St. Louis, ladies and gentlemen, is the No. 1 "most sinful" city in the United States of America. Hooray!

So says a new report from a real estate company called Movoto, which came up with some clever criteria to measure the frequency of the seven deadly sins -- pride, lust, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony and sloth -- in cities across the country. In honor of this recognition, some of us RFT sinners have come up with a list below of the best local places to indulge in each of the seven sins.

First, if you are curious, here is Movoto's explanation of how it translated the seven sins into applicable criteria for modern urban life:

Strip clubs per capita (Lust)
Cosmetic surgeons per capita (Pride)
Violent crime per year per 1,000 residents (Wrath)
Theft per year per 1,000 residents (Envy)
Percentage of disposable income given to charity each year (Greed)
Percentage of obese residents (Gluttony)
Percentage of physically inactive residents (Sloth)

The real estate bloggers apparently compiled data for the 95 most populous cities in the U.S. and ranked them based on those categories, eventually producing a list of the top ten most sinful locales. St. Louis was No. 1:

It appears that the good ole' St. Louis crime data -- which officials here frequently and passionately dismiss -- played a pretty big role in putting us in the No. 1 slot, though we scored high in the obesity category, too.

Who knows, maybe the sinfulness of St. Louis will intrigue more outsiders to come here and stay here! To help, here is RFT's suggestions of the top places in in St. Louis to indulge in the seven sins: